As we come to the end of National Physician’s Week and today, National Physician’s Day, I related this haiku from one of my most gifted and amazing friends. Some years back, he suffered a critical and life-threatening illness that resulted in profound changes in his life with some time in the intensive care unit. This illness changed a man who is talented beyond belief, a brilliant creative genius and professor in ways that few of us can relate or even imagine. Still today, he’s affected by his illness and the events that surrounded it.

I share this haiku because it brings to mind, something that we as physicians must always remember about our patients. They place their health, their trust and many of the most intimate aspects of their lives in our hands. With our hands, we have to care for them; relate to them, in many ways hold them, and be mindful of the honor and privilege of having them place their lives in our care.

As such, we also have to be mindful that illness changes their reality and in many cases their lives profoundly especially when they are critically ill. We have to reach out and extend more comfort over the “cacophony of machines” that becomes the background of their intensive care and sometimes hospital care experience. We have to block that “cacophony” whenever and wherever we can.

I remember watching a tear roll down the side of the face of one of my ICU patients who appeared comatose. The nurses were bathing him and chatting with each other as they turned him. I saw the tear; asked them to speak with him over the ICU noise background. I asked them to play music in his room and I always held his hand when I entered the room to examine him. I am sure that my soul could feel his soul even though he didn’t ever speak to me. I never saw that tear again, after we began speaking and focusing on him, holding his hand, touching his face, and playing his favorite music even though he did not recover from his illness.

I seek to connect with my patients without exception as that is my honor as a physician/surgeon. I spent years learning the science and techniques of medicine and surgery but in these, the later years of my clinical practice, my focus is on the art of medical practice. Within that art is my chance to give some of my heart to those who have placed their trust in me (and my training). I strive to be more human and more comforting. To do less of the science and more of the art is great joy for me. My joy is in the connections; kind of strange for a surgeon.

On this National Doctor’s Day, I am honored to be a physician and grateful for all that this profession has given me. This profession has given me far more than I can give back but I will spend as much time as possible giving as much as I can to those who are in my care.